Happy 1st Birthday

One year ago today at 06.24am we welcomed the fifth member of our family into the world weighing a whopping 9lb 3oz. 

The day had finally arrived, ten days over your due date and we were so excited to have our baby safe and healthy.

365 days of unconditional love, smiles, happiness and the best fun ever have passed. 

You have turned our lives upside down and back round again and our little family is now complete. 

We have watched you grow from this...

to this in what feels like a blink of an eye.

Wishing you our Little Fella a magical 1st Birthday with all our love.

XXX

Our Weekend

On Saturday our Teen and myself met up with some family and friends to celebrate my aunt's 60th birthday at Castlemurray House Hotel.

We had afternoon tea in the most stunning of settings on one of the hottest days of the year. 

What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon with great company, lots of laughs and the sun shining. 

I can't wait to come back here, it's definitely one to put on our list of favourite places.

Hope your weekend was just as wonderful.

XXX

Tuesday's Kitchen Cupcakes

As you know last week our Inbetweener turned eight years old( Birthday Celebrations).

I was busy all day last Tuesday baking and cooking for our little get together and one of the things I made was cupcakes.

So many people are making cupcakes these days and they really are so easy, that being said I'm not the best baker but I try my best.

Here is my recipe and I also used the same mixture to make up the birthday cake. 

This recipe will make 12 cupcakes and  they went down a storm.

Ingredients

150g Butter

150g Caster Sugar

150g Self Raising Flour

2 Eggs

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence

2/3 Tablespoons of Milk

For the Buttercream Icing:

75g Butter

125g Icing Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas4 and line a standard muffin tin with your paper cases.

2. Beat the butter, sugar, flour, milk and eggs together. I used an electric mixer but you can also use a wooden spoon like I normally do, just make sure your butter and eggs are at room temperature.

3. Beat the mixture until smooth and pale, then divide between the paper cases.

4. Bake in the oven for 20 mins, or until golden and remove to a wire tray to cool.

5. At this stage you can make up the buttercream icing, place all the ingredients together and mix with either a wooden spoon or electric mixer.

6. Once the cupcakes are cooled you can ice them, I used a palette knife to save on time but you can pipe it on for a cleaner finish.

7. Decorate as you wish, we used coloured candy discs chosen by the birthday boy himself.

A Very Happy Birthday

Last Tuesday our Inbetweener celebrated his 8th Birthday (Birthday Boy).

As tradition in our family we started the day by singing happy birthday before he was out of bed and he had his favourite breakfast - boiled egg, toast and tea complete with candle.

We had a small party with family at home on Tuesday evening and then he had a few friends on Saturday to a local bowling centre.

We all had a lovely time and the man himself our Inbetweener was chuffed to bits.

I was very busy all day preparing a birthday cake (which tasted much better than it looked), cupcakes, homemade sausage rolls, vol-au-vents and sandwiches. There was hardly anything left over which makes me happy and it was worth the effort.

It was so nice just having our own family around us to celebrate our Inbetweener turning eight years old, it feels like only yesterday that he was so small like our Little Fella is now.

This year was the first time we didn't have loads of children to a birthday party and it was quite strange so we arranged the party just a few weeks ago and booked a local place called Arena 7 in Letterkenny.

He decided himself that he would ask his four closest friends to go bowling and not have the usual big party.

A sure sign that he is growing up fast.

They have a lovely VIP room with bowling lanes, pool table and air hockey game complete with a jukebox for your own private use and they supply the food as well - cocktail sausages, onion rings, chicken nuggets and chips with drinks all round and tea/coffee for mum and dad. The portions were just right and we couldn't eat another bite for the rest of the day, plus I got to go home to a clean house.

What 8 year old wouldn't be happy with that!

In a way we had two celebrations and they were both great. 

We have our beautiful Inbetweener who is now eight years old and everybody who knows him loves him dearly. 

He makes us very proud of him and I'm glad we were able to give him a party to remember.

Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday to our fabulous Inbetweener who is 8 years old today.

He was born at 23.18 hours and weighed in at 8lb 6ozs.

Always smiling, having a laugh and enjoying himself he is a pure joy and we are so proud of him.

Lots of love, hugs and kisses today and always.

We will be celebrating with family this evening and then he will have his party at the weekend and he's really looking forward to it.

XXX